health exchanges - All posts tagged health exchanges

House Speaker John Boehner tries to enroll in Obamacare on the web Thursday, and it apparently wasn’t pretty.

Boehner offered his personal experiences in registering for new health coverage in a blog post on the Speaker’s website. The Ohio Republican has repeatedly called for the repeal of President Obama’s health-care overhaul and presided over dozens of votes on the matter.

The question of how successful Obamacare will be won’t have an easy answer, and attempts to find one may be futile — at least for a while if recent history is any indication.

Take the example of Marilyn Tavenner, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. In her second Congressional hearing since President Obama’s health-care overhaul got its rocky start on Oct. 1, Tavenner went before the Senate Health Education Labor & Pensions committee on Tuesday.

She told lawmakers that by the end of November, roughly 800,000 people are expected to sign up for insurance via the health exchanges set up in 14 states, the District of Columbia and the troubled HealthCare.gov site that serves 36 states.

Now that it appears a Congressional deal is on the horizon to reopen the government and pay the U.S.’s bills, it’s likely more than a few lawmakers’ guns will be turned toward the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and a company called CGI Group Inc., over the worsening mess that is the Obamacare insurance exchange Web site.

More than two weeks after President Obama’s health-care overhaul started to — well, at least try — to accept applications, the main online exchange, www.HealthCare.gov, still can’t seem to get into first gear. Applicants from 36 states that are using the site can create an account, but once they try to log in and actually fill out applications, they’re greeted with a blank page that goes nowhere.

Programs developed by several companies apparently are colliding at this digital junction, the story says, and creating the snarl that has plagued the site since it opened Oct. 1 to handle applications from those trying to take advantage of President Obama’s health-care overhaul.

While the federal government won’t report on Obamacare enrollment until it’s managed to have a month under its belt, California decided to go ahead and disclose activity for the first five days under the Affordable Care Act in the Golden State.

Peter V. Lee, executive director of Covered California, the state’s health exchange, told reporters that 16,311 applications were completed with household eligibility determined while another 27,305 applications were partially completed between last Tuesday and the end of the day on Saturday. That comes to a total of 43,616 for five full days in all. Online, Covered California’s web site had 987,440 unique users during that time, Lee says.

We said we couldn’t spend much more time assessing the Obamacare health exchange web sites, but we thought we should at least try to keep track of the biggest, and what is proving to be the most onerous, of them all.

HealthCare.gov, the clearinghouse for applications under the Affordable Care Act for 36 states, is clearly the most popular of all 16 exchange web sites. It’s probably also the most frustrating. So let’s go into more detail about a short journey — or attempt at one — in trying to sign up for Obamacare there.

With all the brinkmanship going on in Washington these days, perhaps it’s time for a little comic relief.

Take a look at this video, courtesy of “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” It’s a compilation of person-in-the-street interviews in which people are asked if they prefer Obamacare to the Affordable Care Act. (Not to insult our readers’ intelligence, but they are the same thing.)

One little-noticed item amid the fight over Obamacare and the government shutdown that resulted from it is the fact that Congress members and their staffs now will have to go to the exchanges to get insured.

Further, they can’t just settle for the cheapest plan available, at least according to the federal Office of Personnel Management.

The Hill reported on Thursday that OPM notified Congress that only “gold” tier plans will be available. These plans generally are more expensive, with 90% of expenses covered and 10% paid by the policyholder. It cited a fact sheet issued by the OPM.

Our third check — and last for a while due to time constraints — of the 16 health exchanges taking applications under President Obama’s health-care overhaul shows that you can get through on eight web sites — or get to the point where they know you’re faking it. The biggest of them all, the HealthCare.gov site that will process applications for 36 states continues to have its troubles, however, though it seems to have gained a little more traction since Wednesday.

Seven states and the District of Columbia were up and running, well, relatively smoothly. There were the various fits and starts but ultimately these territories either got us through to the point where we would have to electronically sign on the dotted line, or questioned our identity (not a bad thing, as it turns out) with the information we gave.

One of the more noteworthy items out in the Twittersphere this afternoon was a series of Tweets from Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California, who’s suggesting that instead of President Obama’s health-care overhaul, Americans should be offered a chance at the same benefits that Congress gets.

Issa is calling for the expansion of the Federal Employee Health Benefits program, or FEHBP, which he says is a free-market system. But as Business Insider points out, the FEHBP looks a lot like Obamacare in that it sets up a marketplace for private insurers to clamor for policyholders.

About Health Exchange

Health Exchange guides investors to the crucial market intelligence they need to keep up with the health care industry, which makes up one-sixth of the U.S. economy. Anchored by Russ Britt, Health Exchange is the essential site for those looking for the most important news, data and analysis on the sector. You can reach Russ at Rbritt@marketwatch.com.